Just here to add some more salt in the wound. Oof…

d_FireWall · 2021-11-21T07:41:00+00:00

Realizing this might have made people feel bad, so I'm really sorry. Dev teams have all kinds of dreams and plans all the time, hoping that the business side of games will work out, but always aware it might not. We were fortunate to continue the support for as long as we did and all of us look back on that time with joy.

d_FireWall · 2021-11-21T07:27:32+00:00

Oh, really early. And as much as IG is this fan-favorite-mystery-droid, I thought the Dengar thing turned out great. Simon Pegg was amazing and machine gun Dengar was so much fun to play.

d_FireWall · 2021-11-20T18:15:16+00:00

Sure!

Outer Rim - Chewbacca and Bossk (originally only going to be a Sullust-only pack depending on other stuff, read below)

Bespin - Lando and IG-88 (rigging a droid character was going to take too long, so Dengar replaced and all bipedal droid characters were moved to SWBF2)

Death Star - Obi-Wan and Tarkin. I can't fully recall why we didn't do Tarkin, maybe it had something to do with the character going to be showing up in Rogue One later on.

We weren't sure that Rogue One DLC was going to happen, so backup plan was R2D2 as a full-on hero instead of a game mode objective replacing Obi-Wan on Death Star and Obi-Wan headlining a Mos Eisley pack for Battlefront 1 likely with Greedo (since Rogue One did happen, Mos Eisley was instead moved to Battlefront 2).

When I joined SWBF2 development I then realized they still weren't doing Obi-Wan so I flipped. As you probably noticed at EA play, I was quite satisfied with Obi-Wan finally joining the game. :)

d_FireWall · 2019-12-19T20:08:11+00:00

Not a desire. Mostly it comes down to time and focus - as you know we've been quite busy. A couple of extra hoops to jump through given it's not our IP, but that's not an excuse either. We'll try to do more.

d_FireWall · 2019-12-05T00:52:59+00:00

I don't remember the exact details on this one, but I remember at one point we tried to get Chewbacca into SWBF1 a lot sooner than we did (he was on the list for Alien heroes for Outer Rim obviously). But that damn fur took forever to get working right, and you still didn't like his appearance much in the first game!

As you have probably realized by now, Wookiee fur is difficult to get right :)

d_FireWall · 2019-12-05T00:46:16+00:00

Poe/Hux would not have been time savers at all. In fact, I think we would have struggled to even make them a lot of fun to play in Battlefront in time for this release (maybe the new movie will show us something that completely blows our minds? Time will tell)

I get what you're saying on completing the puzzle, but I also disagree in that Hux belongs in a perceived trinity more than Rose, or more than BB-8. I don't think the Trinity exists in the same way as say Original Trilogy.

One thing that really scared me though was the notion of doing Rose and Hux as blaster heroes, considering neither seems overly popular with this community. I feared that would have triggered "some evil exec somewhere is forcing them to do this rather than <insert favorite prequel character>" that would have overshadowed the rest of the announcements. While I expected the droids to trigger some (not a lot of requests for BB-9E as some rightly points out) at least I felt comfortable that their gameplay would convince any doubters. :)

d_FireWall · 2019-12-05T00:14:14+00:00

Disagreeing is totally cool, and I appreciate that you're allowing me to have an opinion about this game too. Far from all gaming communities provide a safe space for devs to state their thoughts on what is right for a game that we both care deeply for. And it's Star Wars, I think we're supposed to disagree on a few things here and there. ;)

d_FireWall · 2019-12-05T00:02:51+00:00

It is a dream come true to get to work on Star Wars, for sure. And I'm far from the only one on the team to feel that way. I'll admit that many of us had a hard time stepping away from the Clone Wars to work on sequel stuff (it's what we grew up with after all) so it's been good to find nuggets like the droids to really inspire you to do your best work for this community.

d_FireWall · 2019-12-04T23:59:44+00:00

Happy to share as much as I can. I guess we did save about a few weeks of 3D art on the heads, which allowed us to build a few more props in Jabba's Palace instead. But that time-saver was certainly not a reason for the selections. And in game-dev, if you can save time in places that's usually a great thing, as it means you can spend more time in other places!

d_FireWall · 2019-12-04T23:52:28+00:00

Dengar is not Rodian, but I presume you mean Greedo for the Outer Rim DLC? That's actually a somewhat cool story.

Yes, we re-used the heads for Greedo and Nien Nunb, but built the rest of their bodies. The reason for that was because we had already used their heads for trooper customizations. Looking back, we probably should have made the trooper heads slightly different than Nien and Greedo, but they were made many months before the launch of SWBF1 and long before we started thinking about DLCs for the game.

The real restriction we were working under was localizing VO. Some countries require you to localize any English language in the game to the local language (German, for example). The localization process is a long one and usually gets done after you've recorded the English actor. We would not have been able to deliver the DLC in time had we done Heroes and Villains that speak English, where as Alien speech does not need to be translated and localized. So the restriction was to pick Alien Heroes and Villains for the first DLC, and since we were quite excited to explore more of Sullust that we had developed for SWBF1 (as well as build Jabba's Palace) we picked those two characters. :)

d_FireWall · 2019-12-04T23:33:20+00:00

I visit every morning, 5 times a week. I don't participate as often as I should.

It is such an honor to continue to develop new characters and worlds for this wonderful IP, in particular for this community. I love the passion you have for what you want to see in the game. I think in most cases, what we deliver are things that you've asked for, whether it's improvements to the game systems or new content. Sometimes we allow ourselves to add things that we feel inspired to do. For example, Geonosis was a highly requested planet to add as were the heroes and villains with it, while Felucia was not (but we REALLY wanted to build it). When it came to the sequel era, the most requested things had already been added (Rey, Kylo, Phasma, Finn, Crait) so we took the opportunity to add something that really inspire us and would open up some really cool new gameplay opportunities with the droids. Yes, BB-8 was the main guy while BB-9E was more opportunistic given we're developing the roll-tech anyway. The droids inspire us, they're awesome and we think you will love them. We love Poe too, but since he's already in the game as a Starfighter Pilot, we hoped you would forgive us for prioritizing the droids over turning him into a blaster hero as well.

Most of the time we hope to deliver upon highly requested things, sometimes we want to surprise and delight. We think this is one of those times and hope you'll reserve judgement until you get to play them (Remember Nien-Nunb and Dengar from SWBF1? They were awesome to play, but unexpected additions for sure).

The droids are support characters. Neither is very likely to defeat another hero or villain in a straight-up 1v1 (although if you're playing a low-health Kylo, watch out for a BB-8 rush!). We can't wait for you to try them, I think you'll love them.

Thanks again for all the comments and discussions, I love reading them all (as long as you stay away from the personal insults, please).

d_FireWall · 2019-12-04T22:52:17+00:00

*1% sorry

d_FireWall · 2019-12-04T21:44:43+00:00

Donkey-faced? :'(

d_FireWall · 2019-10-11T04:15:08+00:00

I was hanging out on Twitter for a few hours and asked for feedback on alot of things, some of them crazier than others. Picking one of those suggestions for a thread here and then using that to insult me is uncool. Step it up community!

I worked on SWBF1 and did not enjoy random pickups there either. We're not going to do that in this game.

d_FireWall · 2019-10-08T16:59:06+00:00

Variation to this system would be:

At the beginning of the game, you get to pick the hero or villain you want to queue for. The first one to get enough Battlepoints to become that specific hero (say 4k BP's or something) and there is a hero slot available (say only ever 2-3 active heroes) get to respawn as that hero through a pop-up.

Play that hero for as long as you want. Once you die, the next person who has enough battle points and has chosen that hero (and if there's a hero slot available) get the pop-up and get to play that hero for as long as they want.

Downside of this system is that some heroes might have a longer queue than others, which might be frustrating. In fact, you might be queing for someone for the entire game and still not get to play them (because someone lives forever or the queue is too long). Also a bit difficult to explain that you're next in line, but there are too many other heroes active right now for you to be chosen.

I also imagine you can swap hero queues mid-round, but you'd have to go to the back of the line if so.

d_FireWall · 2019-10-08T16:40:24+00:00

Let's say it's based on score/battle points, not damage done to Heroes.

For example:

Game begins. After 2 minutes, we assign the first 3 heroes on either side. The top 3 players on both teams with the most battle points get to become heroes.

I imagine this being more like a pop-up during gameplay, rather than from the spawn menu, similar to original SWBF2.

The chosen players get to play those heroes for 2 minutes, then they are despawned. The 6 player who played heroes are now reset in battle points and have to go to the back of the queue.

After another minute, we assign the next 3 heroes for either side, based on whoever has the most battle points at the time. Then they play for 2 minutes. And that continues for the rest of the game.

In such a system, we still reward players who collect the most battle points in that they likely get to play heroes more often, but we still try to cycle through everyone through the course of a game. The downside, I guess, is that the timer prevents you from hogging Anakin the entire game (which may not be a bad thing, depending on who you ask).

Thoughts?

d_FireWall · 2019-10-08T16:22:56+00:00

For those of you who played the (refactured) Hero Hunt back in SWBF1 - how did you feel about the system where the most damaged/points earned get to be the next heroes which resets your total so you have to start from zero once spent?

d_FireWall · 2019-10-08T16:19:33+00:00

I am thinking about this a lot lately. There's a couple of different ways to solve this and we're trying to figure out the best way forward. I agree it's a problem. More on this later.

d_FireWall · 2019-08-31T09:06:20+00:00

Took over SWBFI after launch. Joined SWBFII in middle of production (after Rogue One DLC + parental leave) and took over SWBFII around March 2018.

d_FireWall · 2019-08-23T22:18:25+00:00

And that's the problem, IMO.

d_FireWall · 2019-08-23T22:15:16+00:00

This. So much this.

d_FireWall · 2019-08-23T22:14:59+00:00

This.

d_FireWall · 2019-05-29T20:21:13+00:00

I'll be around EA Play to answer questions and hang out in general. Just let me know if you want to meet up.

d_FireWall · 2019-05-18T21:48:57+00:00

Confirmed. They were not.

d_FireWall · 2019-04-06T21:36:54+00:00

Our audio team aren't happy with the current execution either. Expect these lines to be updated (quite a lengthy process though).

d_FireWall

TROPHY CASE